For, God
having, by an inseparable connexion, joined virtue and public
happiness together, and made the practice thereof necessary to the
preservation of society, and visibly beneficial to all with whom the
virtuous man has to do; it is no wonder that every one should not only
allow, but recommend and magnify those rules to others, from whose
observance of them he is sure to reap advantage to himself He may, out
of interest as well as conviction, cry up that for sacred, which, if
once trampled on and profaned, he himself cannot be safe nor secure.
This, though it takes nothing from the moral and eternal obligation
which these rules evidently have, yet it shows that the outward
acknowledgment men pay to them in their words proves not that they are
innate principles: nay, it proves not so much as that men assent to
them inwardly in their own minds, as the inviolable rules of their own
practice; since we find that self-interest, and the conveniences of
this life, make many men own an outward profession and approbation
of them, whose actions sufficiently prove that they very little
consider the Lawgiver that prescribed these rules; nor the hell that
he has ordained for the punishment of those that transgress them.
7. Men's actions convince us that the rule of virtue is not their
internal principle.
Pages:
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78